Five leading computer and consumer electronics companies -- Hitachi, Ltd., IBM
Corporation, NEC Corporation, Pioneer Electronic Corporation and Sony Corporation -
- today announced that they have agreed to unify their approaches for creating invisible
electronic watermarks for digital movies and video.
Digital watermarking technology is seen by content providers as critical to
controlling unauthorized copying of content with future digital recording equipment. The
five companies expect the first significant application of the new technology to be in
future DVD (digital versatile disk) systems. Digital watermarks are also expected to be
used in the copy protection of content distributed electronically via digital broadcasts and
networks.
Current read-only DVD systems prevent unauthorized copying from pre-
recorded DVD disks by using licensed technologies, such as the digital "content-
scrambling system" (CSS) to encrypt and play back movies. But with the advent of
digital recording equipment such as recordable DVDs, digital tape recorders and
personal computers with large storage capacity, additional copy-protection features are
needed to prevent unauthorized copies of the copyrighted digital content. The five
companies, which call themselves the Galaxy group, aim to provide such features via
electronic watermarking technology that permits the copyright owner to specify whether
content can be copied freely, can only be copied once or cannot be copied at all,
therefore encouraging the owners to provide consumers with a variety of content.
Although invisible to the user, electronic watermarks contain information that can
be recognized for example, by a detector chip in consumer digital recorders, or special
detection software running on compliant PC systems as instructions for enabling or
disabling its ability to make a copy. In addition to being invisible to users, electronic
watermarks must survive through normal processes such as digital-to-analog conversion
and repeated digital compression/decompression cycles while still remaining detectable
by the digital recorder system.
Background:
The five companies were among 11 that in September 1997 proposed watermark
solutions to the Data Hiding subgroup (DHSG) of the Copy Protection Technical
Working Group (CPTWG). The CPTWG is an ad hoc group of experts from computer,
consumer-electronics and movie-studio industries that was formed to assess the technical
merits of competing copy-protection proposals for movies, video and other content on
digital media.
Last summer, following the first round of evaluations by the DHSG, several
companies sought to strengthen their independent proposals by joining forces. IBM and
NEC combined their efforts to jointly develop a powerful method for automatically
creating and embedding robust watermarks that are invisible to viewers. At about the
same time, Hitachi, Pioneer and Sony focused their extensive expertise in consumer
products and watermarking technologies behind a separate proposal that featured critical
technical elements for maintaining the high visual quality of authorized copies and for
meeting the more demanding requirements of future high-definition television (HDTV)
content. By combining their expertise across both information technology and consumer
electronic environments, the five companies now expect their watermarking method to
provide superior performance for today's needs as well as for future high-definition
television standards, digital-cinema distribution and other computer-based high-
resolution digital-image applications.
The Watermark Review Panel (WaRP) was formed at the December 1998
meeting of the CSS (Contents Scrambling Scheme) Licensees to define and execute the
final evaluations of the remaining proposals for video watermarking. Following the
formation of the Galaxy group, only two proposals remain for evaluation by WaRP: the
unified Galaxy proposal and one submitted by Philips, Macrovision and Digimarc. After
completing its evaluations, WaRP will report its findings to the Interim Copy Protection
Advisory Council (ICPAC) of the CSS licensing entity, which is expected to select by this
summer, the watermark proposal that best meets the requirements of the CSS licensees.
<Contacts>
Emi Takase IBM Asia Pacific
Hitachi, ltd. Fred P. McNeese
Tel: +81-3-3258-2055 Tel: +81-3-5572-2643
Fax: +81-3-3258-5480 Fax: +81-3-5572-2443
E-mail: emi@cm.head.hitachi.co.jp E-mail: fredmc@jp.ibm.com
WWW: http://www.hitachi.co.jp/index-e.html WWW: http://www.ibm.com
NEC Corporation Pioneer Electronic Corp.
Aston Bridgman H. Wakabayashi, H. Seki or T. Akao
Tel: +81-3-3798-6511 Tel: +81-3-3495-9885
Fax: +81-3-3457-7249 Fax: +81-3-3495-4301
E-mail: Aston_Bridgman@HO-PRD.ccgw.nec.co.jp WWW: http://www.pioneer.co.jp
WWW: http://www.nec-global.com
Sony CorporationDaniel Lintz
Tel: +81-3-5448-
2200Fax: +81-3-5448-3061
E-mail:lintz@ccom.sony.co.jp
WWW: http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyDrive.shtml
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